


the one when one of them is dead

by bluecarrot



Category: 18th Century CE RPF, Hamilton - Miranda
Genre: Canon Compliant, Gen, also a ghost, in that Hamilton is dead, or is Burr hallucinating? who can tell, sort of, the deaths are all historical fact
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-04
Updated: 2016-09-04
Packaged: 2018-08-10 16:50:18
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,863
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7853230
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bluecarrot/pseuds/bluecarrot
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>after the duel, Hamilton comes back.<br/>he never could shut up.</p><p>all of this really happened, more or less.</p>
            </blockquote>





	the one when one of them is dead

**Author's Note:**

> written 8/23/16.

The only difference between Hamilton alive and Hamilton dead, Burr thought with something like regret, was that the living Alexander had had sometimes to rest. Dead, he could piss off Aaron at any moment.  
  
Theodosia believed in spirituality -- somewhat shamefacedly, since it one of the few instances her opinions differed from her father's.

Burr was never sure if the foundation of her belief was desperation or hope -- he could not, would not fault her for the latter.

"Don't you ever hear Ma?" she'd asked him once, almost petulant.

It was 1799. He wouldn't shoot Hamilton for another five years.

He had been reading. He looked over at her -- a small, slip-shouldered form silhouetted in the window, embroidering something or other. A handkerchief, maybe. Not a baby's cap; that came later, she wasn't married yet and he'd cautioned her often enough (with vivid description) of the need for circumspection in matters of physical intimacy.

"If I ever caught so much as a glimpse of your mother's dress, I would grab unto it and hold her here."

"But maybe you aren't looking right."

"Why are you so determined for the dead to return, Theo? Let them rest."

 

He'd eat his own words in a decade, when her ship was lost and he haunted the harbor long after hope was gone. Even then he couldn't bring himself to visit any charlatans. If she was alive, no power on earth would keep her from him. If she were dead --

In his dreams her body tumbled on the sea-bed, haunted by his grief; he woke and found his own bed racked with sweat, his face sticky and raw with salt.

 

In 1806, Burr found Europe to be cold and rainy and mostly boring; he was a little surprised.

Less surprising was the sense of being dogged. He constantly heard footsteps behind him -- the gamins, he thought, and indeed he spent a hairtrigger night in an inn while they went though his papers and he played interminable games of chess with a terrible partner -- but they found nothing, they released him, Burr was not stupid enough to write things like that down, anymore.

He wrote to Theo instead -- a long journal-letter of stupid events and stupid parties and his sylvanian trysts. " _Tant pis_ ," he wrote, " _cinq franc_." He liked to think of her laughter over these ratings, these excesses.

 

Of course he drank too much. Of course he laughed at Hamilton's name. What else was there to do?

 

Burr hurried home from one of these excesses and it was raining and he'd lost his umbrella again somewhere and he wasn't thinking wasn't thinking and the steps came up behind and he shut his eyes, shut his eyes --

And stumbled back against the wall of a house. 

Someone had pushed him.

There's no one here.

"Hamilton, you fuck," he said aloud, sure of this as he'd been sure of few things in his life: it was Hamilton, and living or dead, Alex was a fuck. 

His voice was shaking.

Rain fell on the cobblestones.

 

Burr woke in France; he woke in England; he woke on a coach and could not remember what continent he is on -- or even the year. Because there was a man across from him, looking amused and annoyed and disconcertingly corporeal. 

"I remember shooting you," Burr said. "I remember that much very clearly."

"What did you want to say to me?"

"... what?"

"You shot me, and then you said: _I must speak to him_."

Burr didn't really want to say it in front of Pendleton and he certainly didn't had no intention of saying it now, in the rickety rocking coach, sticking in mud every few feet, dragged along by tired, overworked horses. "Have you seen Theodosia?"

"Oh no. You don't get to dismiss a simple question and then expect to be indulged." 

 

Burr woke.

He kicked a chair across the room and swore -- then righted it again and sat down, trembling in his knees, rubbing a wrist across his eyes. He'd never wept about Hamilton. Should he start now? Would that bring some ephemeral forgiveness?

 _Alexander,_ he tried. _Alex, I'm sorry._

The words stuck in his throat. He wasn't _sorry_ and they both knew it.

 

He did not let himself indulge in believing it was a dream. Hamilton was the same as ever, irritating and mouthy and inexpressibly dear, and Burr felt he carried Hamilton now; he was the life for both of them -- and simultaneously that he been buried alongside Alex, under the pompous marble at Trinity, tucked close together as two lovers. He was interred near Burr's wife, near Alex's eldest son, near a dozen of their other friends. All gone now, gone.

Burr could feel the worms crawl over him: well-known, now. Familiar as his own hands digging in a pocket for change.

 

The dreams continued.

Burr visited a charlatan.

It was not helpful but he managed to leave before he knocked everything off the table and pulled down the curtains.

 

"I'm sorry," he said, the next time Alex showed up.

"Liar. Why did you shoot me?"

"I thought it would shut you up."

And Hamilton snorted. He was suppressing laughter; he was trying to not even smile.

Watching, Burr bit his lip. "Why didn't you apologize?"

"I hadn't done anything wrong!"

" _Intemperate_ ," Burr quoted. "And _dangerous_."

"Did you actually memorize it?"

"Did you actually _say_ it?"

"Aaron --" Hamilton had the grace, for once, to look embarrassed. "You've been drunk and angry before. Did I call you out to Weehawken every time you insulted me? And did I ever _shoot_ you?"

"You deserved it," Burr snapped. "I don't want to talk about this. Tell me about Theo."

"Oh, shut up about your wife. _I'm_ here and we need to talk -- apparently -- and --"

"I never have to talk with you again if I don't want to, and you're a son of a bitch. I can let you wander around for decades. Gather dust in the corners, Hamilton, because you're buried under an ugly tomb and nobody but your wife and children remember your name. Or care."

"You shot me," said Hamilton, somehow mollified by this outburst.

"You shot first!"

" _I_ was shooting into the _air_ , Burr."

"You didn't have to shoot at all. You didn't have to show up. You didn't have to aim at me --"

"I shot into the _air!_ "

"Bullshit," said Burr, and Hamilton's gaze faltered, dropped away, and Burr woke up with a strange pain in his side --

 

"You asked about your wife."

They were in the front parlor of Hamilton's house; he recognized it easily enough, though the furniture was different and the drapes updated; he hadn't been here since -- since --

Since when did Eliza let in the sun? Because it poured in through the tall windows like liquid gold.

"She misses you," said Hamilton. He said, hesitating: "She said that you're wasting time."

Burr shook his head. "I can't imagine what there is left for me to do."

"True enough. You've already successfully fought to take down one country, murdered your best friend, fucked your way across Europe, drank more brandy than any one man should ever imbibe, attempted treason --"

"Jesus, shut up."

"That last was pure Jeffersonian mischief, I agree. But you can't deny the veracity of the others."

Burr frowned at him. "You were never my best friend."

"Careful which hairs you split, Little Burr. I could give up on you entirely."

"And where would that leave you?" Burr said: he recognized, in the way Hamilton's eyes narrowed, that it was a home blow.

But Alexander shrugged, that old glare of determination in his eyes. "I'd find a way around it. All roads lead to Rome, you know. And you might be the shortest distance, but there's never been a street more riddled with holes and horse-shit."

Burr woke, swearing.

 

Spring, 1814.

Theo's child died, a sweet boy of seven. Burr grieved, and her husband grieved, but Theo was inconsolable; she wanted to see her father, she wept. She wanted to go _home._

Burr wanted to see her. They hadn't been together any length of time since he fled to Europe; he wanted to see her, he wanted more of her than her portrait on a wall, carried with him all those years, spoken to like she'd speak back if he were only patient. So she packed her things and took a ship and sent word: I will be there in three weeks, or sooner if the winds prevail.

The winds were cruel. Her ship was late -- and later -- and then Burr's fear was an undeniable reality.

She would have wanted him to comfort her husband, who had lost child and wife in a single horrible year; but she was dead. She didn't get to make decisions for him now.

So Burr went back to his home in New York and stared at the walls. He couldn't muster the effort to rent a whore; he could barely lift a glass to his lips.

All his Theos. Gone now. Stolen away. He'd named one after the other -- even then he knew Theodosia was sick, he knew she wouldn't get better -- he had wanted something of her to hold on to, something permanent.

The only permanent was loss.

So he drank.

 

"Alex," said Burr, to empty air. He had been writing all afternoon and his hand ached and he remembered, suddenly, the sight of Alex prone on the rug of the office, moaning aloud with pleasure while some servant rubbed the knots out of his hand. _Right there, yes, yes,_ he'd said, looking for all the world like a man in the throes of passion.

Maybe writing and sex were the same thing to Alexander. He'd never asked.

"Are you here? Can you hear me?"

No answer.

"I have missed you."

Silence from the dead.

So Burr looked at the desk -- the pen, the papers, the drying salt. They used to sit across from each other and trade notes, a volley of pages going back and forth, with Burr correcting and editing down Hamilton's quick, hot-headed arguments, and Alexander adding back in paragraphs of explanation and exposition, completely unnecessary.

Somehow, looking back it was all charming.

"We worked so well together," he said to the empty room.

Silence and dust.

 

The dreams (if dreams they were) dwindled away, and he was not aware of missing them; he was only barely aware they happened at all -- except when he grew old, very old, and bedridden, and infirm, having lost everything and everyone dear: he woke from a dream to find Hamilton watching him.

"You," he said. "You, again."

"Me," Hamilton agreed.

Burr shut his eyes. "How are things there?"

"Jefferson's still an ass," Hamilton said immediately, as if that were the most relevant thing. "Everyone else?"

He shrugged.

"Washington?" said Burr.

"Gone."

"Gone?"

"Gone."

"You're here."

Hamilton said, emphasizing strangely: "You're here."

"Why do you say what I'm saying? Can't think of words for your own? That -- that doesn't seem like you." Burr smiled. "Pigheaded thief. Orphan. Thief ... " Cleared his throat. "You stayed."

"You stayed."

"Much longer?"

"No," said Hamilton, breaking the silence of thirty years. "Not much longer."

**Author's Note:**

> \- Historical Aaron Burr's "treason" was indeed 95% Jeffersonian mischief
> 
> \- after his daughter's ship was lost, a friend wrote to comfort Burr, saying that maybe Theo was captured by pirates or some such. He wrote back "No, no, she is dead. If she were alive, no power on earth could keep her from her father."  
> Oh, Burr. Oh my heart.
> 
> \- the "hairtrigger night playing chess" actually happened; Burr, on the lam after shooting Hamilton, traveled under a false name. In this instance his papers were searched and he was released (free to write more letters home.)
> 
> \- Hamilton did not, in fact, shoot into the air during his final duel. He shot a branch off a nearby tree. We don't know whether he fired raising his arm to shoot in the sky or lowering his arm to shoot at Burr or (as his second claimed) his gun just totally went off randomly after "that wretch Burr" shot him -- but he absolutely fired in Burr's direction.


End file.
